Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56369 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance No. 706
Publisher: 
Stockholm School of Economics, The Economic Research Institute (EFI), Stockholm
Abstract: 
Prefetching is a simple and general method for single-chain parallelisation of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm based on the idea of evaluating the posterior in parallel and ahead of time. Improved Metropolis-Hastings prefetching algorithms are presented and evaluated. It is shown how to use available information to make better predictions of the future states of the chain and increase the efficiency of prefetching considerably. The optimal acceptance rate for the prefetching random walk Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is obtained for a special case and it is shown to decrease in the number of processors employed. The performance of the algorithms is illustrated using a well-known macroeconomic model. Bayesian estimation of DSGE models, linearly or nonlinearly approximated, is identi…ed as a potential area of application for prefetching methods. The generality of the proposed method, however, suggests that it could be applied in other contexts as well.
Subjects: 
Prefetching
Metropolis-Hastings
Parallel Computing
DSGE models
Optimal acceptance rate
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
JEL: 
C11
C13
C63
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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